Fancy Fonts are only for headings. By fancy I mean Georgia, Times New Roman, and every other serif font. You cannot read (online) sentence upon sentence of type with little curls, and hooks on them. It just gets too messy and unreadable. So save those fancy fonts for headings, and headings only.

Controlling links in new windows. Ever been to a website and clicked on a link and it opens in a new window? Annoying right? Well to most users it is, as the user/visitor of your website wants to control where they want the links to open. This applies to internal and external links. Don’t be fooled into thinking that by opening a link in a new window is good because then the visitor doesn’t leave your site. It isn’t good, if the user doesn’t want to leave your site they can click the Big Back Button that is on all browsers. I find it so annoying when I want to open links into (Firefox) tabs, yet an obtrusive new window opens. Plus most users can right-click-open-new-tab or click on the mouse-scroll to open that page in a tab or window by themselves.

Keep my browser size the same. Just the same as how I like to be in control of where links open, I also like to be in full control of my browser size. I have a huge monitor, and most of the time I don’t like to open my browser to full size so that the browser sits neatly in the center of my screen at the right size so when a some website automatically changes my browser to full size I get annoyed, especially if I am reading something in another tab (waiting for your page to load in the other tab). Remember, an annoyed visitor is a visitor lost.

Did I really subscribe? Do not subscribe me to your newsletter because I registered to view posts. Do not subscribe me to your comments RSS because I simply made a comment. Do not annoy me with unsolicited emails. You are making it easier for me to associate your website with negative connotations and most likely I will not return.

Where is that music coming from? Do not play music when your website loads. What if I am listening to my own music then suddenly I hear something else interrupting my track? Do not make it impossible to find the stop button. If I can’t see a stop button within 3 seconds I close the tab. End of story. If you must have music, let me decide if I want to play it by showing me the play and stop button before ramming N*Sync down to my ear drums.

Kill all splash pages! I don’t care if I need to use Internet Explorer 6, use 800X600 resolution, have a tolerance for swearing, and respect for the owner. Instead you are just giving me reasons to click my browsers Back button and get out of there quick. Do you really think I am going to load up Internet Explorer and change my resolution just to view your site?

Complex URL structures? Not only does a simple keyword based URL structure improve your search engine ranking, but it also makes it easier for your visitor to know where they are going before clicking. If a visitor bookmarks your page and sees your link in their bookmarks a few weeks later they are not going to know what http://domain.com/p=?321 means. A structure such as http://domain.com/blog/illustration/design_is_good.html gives them more indication.

Where has the navigation gone? Use text-based navigation links. If you must use images, specify an alt and title attribute. You wouldn’t want someone visiting your website with images disabled and not seeing any navigation at all. For the simple reason of search engine ranking, don’t use JavaScript or Flash navigations. These are also not advised in case the visitor browses with JavaScript disabled, or Flash player not installed.

Tell me it’s a .PDF first. I hate when I search for things on Google and I click on a link quickly before looking at the URL, and suddenly my browser freezes and starts to load something. It is then that I realise I clicked directly on a .PDF file from the search engine results. It has happened on other websites too where the link was not labeled as a .PDF. There’s no need for an external link arrow or image, but a small text warning in brackets next to the link will do.

Is that a link or normal text? Do not underline normal text unless absolutely necessary, especially if your links are underlined. Also don’t have so many styles in one paragraph. I come across these all the time on websites where not only is the colour changed for a bolded link, but it is also a different font and different size than the rest of the text. You may think it looks cool having random colours and emphasis everywhere, but really it just looks tacky.